Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically generate web traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically start attracting new traffic just by posting new content consistently to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going fine in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, all equipment stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and walks immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap about 1 cm from the top-right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Angrily, the manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why were they expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While many experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different components such as your server, your web site, and various external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linked back to your website will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will then be given added exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account and site details have been set up, use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress via a simple plugin and send data instantly to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, you can use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
Tags And Categories
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post web content regularly to start attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take many web developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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